About Me

AKA: Ken Kirkeby. Retired teacher of English and French. Francophile, Anglophile and lover of California, where I spent most of my life attempting to transmit my enthusiasm for literature and writing to kids who preferred movies. Now I am "old" and living in Minnesota Nice-land--from which snarky blogging is my occasional escape.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Deus Ex Homo?

According to the rules of natural selection, homosexuality should have disappeared long ago--at least if, as most educated people seem to believe, it is an inborn trait and not a freely chosen lifestyle.

So, why do homosexuals continue to pop up, in every culture (even Iran!!) and clime and time?

Solution 1: God is responsible. In order to create unity and a sense of common purpose among his Chosen, God creates sexual outsiders whom the Chosen can blame and persecute (instead of God) for all the evils of human existence. Intelligent (?) Design.

Solution 2 (similar to Solution 1): the Devil is responsible. In order to spread evil and create divisions among the Chosen, Satan creates homosexuals to do battle for the Dark Side. (He does this, presumably, using various Rosemary's Baby-type strategies.) Nefarious Design.

Solution 3: Homosexuals themselves are responsible. People who say they are attracted to members of their own sex are, in fact, making a conscious Choice to espouse unnatural and perverted behavior. They could change if they truly wanted to, but they have decided to be anti-human (and anti-God). This explanation might be adopted by either theists or atheists. Interior Design.

Solution 4: Some peculiar gene, passed down by siblings or relatives rather than by homosexuals themselves (who usually don't have offspring), transmits homosexuality because, somehow, homosexual behaviors--in some small percentage of any given genetic line--are useful for the survival of that line. Hand-Me-Down Design.

Solution 5: Some hormonal imbalance (or divergence from the "usual") creates, in utero, a fetus that will be oriented toward his/her same sex. In this scenario, once doctors have discovered the exact nature of this hormonal anomaly, homosexuality could be chemically eliminated--also in utero. Hormonal Design.

Solution 5: Homosexuals are aliens, deposited like cuckoo eggs, in human homes by some extraterrestrial forces determined to use them (the homos) to alter or influence the course of human social development. (I doubt that many people subscribe to this solution, but it seems every bit as possible as the first two.) Out-of-this-World Design.

Solution 6: Nobody knows. It is a mystery. It seems unlikely that homosexuals--at least most of them--actually choose their orientation. But likewise, there is no conclusive evidence about genetic transmission, hormonal anomalies, etc. And neither God nor the Devil would probably give a crap--even if these two metaphysical "entities" could be proven to exist. Hidden Design.

Frankly, I don't give a crap either. The only thing that bothers me is that the LACK of scientific evidence might embolden the Evangelicals and Bible-thumpers in their denunciation--not only of the gay "lifestyle," but of the theory of evolution itself. "Look," they might say, "natural selection, survival of the fittest, all that nonsense doesn't work--otherwise, homosexuality, which obviously does not contribute to genetic survival, would have died out millenia ago. The fact that this perversion still persists is proof that God is in charge and that Intelligent Design is the only legitimate explanation for human nature."

Sigh. I just don't want the persistence of homosexuality to be used as an apologia for the existence of God!